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SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW ENGLAND 
IN THE PAST FIFTY YEARS 



EDWIN W. SANBORN 

32 Nassau Street, New York City 



Reprinted from the Report of the Froceedini^s of the A merican Social Science 

Association for iqoo 



BOSTON 
George H. Ellis, Printer, 272 Congress Street 

1901 



Offt. 



2 06 



SOCIAL CHANGES IN NEW ENGLAND IN 
THE PAST FIFTY YEARS. 



Fifty years ago the new order of things had made little change 
in the outward appearance of New England. It was still a com- 
pact community, peopled for the most part by direct descendants 
of the old Puritan stock. It was a land of farmers, and the type 
of New England life was the country village. Commerce and 
fisheries were important sources of wealth ; but merchants and 
seafaring men, as well as the minister, lawyer, doctor, and me- 
chanic, generally owned a little land, and helped to make agricult- 
ure the prevailing occupation. Factories had been slowly taking 
the place of household industry, yet manners and way of living 
belonged to the homespun age. People continued to prepare, by 
the chastening of Fast Day, for the exuberance of May muster. 
The electric telegraph was a mysterious novelty. Stage-coaches 
still creaked and rattled over many routes of traffic. Railroad 
trains were drawn by small, asthmatic locomotives, having large 
smoke-stacks, shaped like an inverted volcano and pouring forth 
proportionate volumes of smoke. Delays were frequent, to slake 
the thirst of the engine and replenish the itinerant wood-pile 
which served as fuel. The cars had low, flat roofs and small, 
cinder-cemented windows, and were but little better ventilated 
than the drawing-room cars of the present day. The railroad 
system of New England has always been rich in "junctions," 
where, in the early days, the traveller awaited his "connecting 
train " for periods ranging from a fleeting hour to undetermined 
stretches of duration. It is a curious fact, noted by the late Pro- 
fessor Phelps in his poetic tribute to Essex Junction, that there 
was always a cemetery near, catering perhaps to such wayfarers as 
might sink under wasting afflictions or be suddenly stricken at 
the lunch counter. Beyond the reach of the railroads, wood and 
farm produce were carried to market by river boats and coasting 



schooners, which brought back the " W. I. goods and groceries " 
of the country store. It was still the day of large families and 
small travel, of near-by markets and local peculiarities. 

The smallness of travel applied only to landsmen, and not to 
the farmers who ploughed the deep. Coves and harbors along the 
coast were lively with Down- East punkies and clippers, and with 
the curing and storing of fish. Daniel Webster, trying a case on 
Cape Cod relating to a small harbor in the South Pacific, found 
that seven of the jury had often visited the harbor and knew all 
about it. The commander of a Russian exploring expedition, 
engaged in one of the early attempts to square the arctic circle, 
became lost in a fog as he was about to secure his fame by sur- 
veying the terminal facilities of the earth. When the fog lifted, 
he found himself in the midst of a Yankee fleet and near a harbor 
which was their regular base of supply for cruises to the north- 
ward. The wives and daughters of Nantucket climbed up to the 
" whale-walks " on their house-tops to watch for returning husbands 
and fathers. Bangor was the largest pine-distributing centre on 
the continent, and the lines of the Gloucester fishermen had gone 
out through all the earth. The New England of the Puritans had 
reached the height of its prosperity and the golden age of its 
literature. It was making ready for its day of trial and sacrifice 
in the Civil War. 

About the middle of the century the rapid extension of railroads 
brought the " rocky farm " into contrast and competition with the 
"rich prairie." The Walker tariff of 1846 and the opening of 
new markets stimulated the building of large factories and 
hastened the "rush to the cities." The discovery of gold on the 
Pacific coast aggravated the Western fever, while famine and dis- 
turbances abroad were start,ing a migration across the Atlantic. 
The growth of shore fishing and the canning of sea-food were 
beginning to affect the deep-sea fisheries, when the reciprocity 
treaty of 1854 opened our markets to Canadian fishermen. The 
surviving monsters of the deep were seeking discreet seclusion 
just as the introduction of mineral oils rendered their pursuit less 
profitable. 

If some supernatural observer could have taken a bird's-eye 
view of New England in 1850 and again in 1900, he would read 
the story of change in plain characters. Approaching New 
England, as would become a Superior Intelligence, by way of 



5 

Boston, he would find the region for some fifteen miles around 
the gilded dome on Beacon Hill so "filled in " as to form a con- 
tinuous city with a million people, nearly half of them — figuring 
back for three generations — being Irish, about one-sixth "Old 
Americans," and the rest Germans, British, Scandinavians, 
Italians, Frenchmen, Chinamen, and citizens generally. Moving 
along the seacoast, his eye would be caught by the bleaching 
" whalers " labelled as curiosities at the New Bedford docks, by 
the villas and palaces at Newport, by the sagging wharves of 
Salem and Newburyport, and by huge hotels at every sandy beach 
from Narragansett to Old Orchard. In smaller harbors he might 
see a trim Yankee clipjSer lying idly in the mud at the head of the 
cove, while a splendid pleasure yacht rests at anchor within the 
point. An old weather-cured skipper, whose voice pierced the 
fogs of the Great Banks and rose above the blasts of the Horn, 
is perhaps taking out a party of land lubbers and lubberesses in his 
catboat to fish for scup or flat-fish. In river valleys the smoke 
of factory chimneys would draw attention to busy cities, wherever 
water power had fixed a site for manufacturing. In their suburbs 
he would mark the hard roads, with their maze of wires and buzz 
of trolleys and lines of thrifty dwellings. He would note that the 
forests had been thinned and shrinking back up the mountain 
ranges and toward the northern border. He would miss the 
flocks and herds which dotted the hill pastures, and would linger 
above the scrubby fields, tumble-down fences, and decaying houses 
of the abandoned farms. Less often he would come upon a de- 
serted church, a ghastly hulk, weather-stained and crumbling, win- 
dows blind and glaring, ridge-pole sunken, lightning-rod loosened 
from the tottering steeple, and drooping like the bedraggled feather 
of a fallen outcast. In the streets of the cities he would be im- 
pressed by the large plate glass windows of the shops, with their 
display of attractions, and by the variety of fruit and produce 
offered for sale. He would be surprised at the large number of 
old and young wearing glasses, and would perhaps notice how 
rarely he met a person pitted with small-pox. He would wonder 
at the cleanliness of the street crossings, till he observed the 
trailing skirts of the ladies. In Fall River, with 85 per cent, of 
foreign population, he might inquire his way half a dozen times 
before meeting a person who spoke English. 

Having left a New England of full-blooded Yankees, which 



6 

supplied its own wants and sent little abroad, he finds a popula- 
tion half foreign, dependent on others for its corn and grain and 
beef and mutton, but supplying half the nation with boots and 
shoes, making three-fourths of its cottons and using half its wool. 

Early in the century, each farm, like the community, was self- 
sustaining. The " independent farmer " was indeed independent. 
Food and clothing are both grown on the farm. He made his 
own sleds, brooms, medicines, vinegar, soap, ox-yokes; some- 
times his own tools, rope, shingles, boxes, barrels, and furniture. 
He drew sweetness from rock-maples and dipped light from tal- 
low. He got his pins from the white-thorn bush in the pasture. 
He grafted trees and painted buildings. ' He would " like to 
see anything he couldn't do." The congenial practice of swap- 
ping helped him to be independent even of money. The home- 
spun idea was the key to everything in life and character. 
Clothing being made at home, the flax grown and the sheep 
raised corresponded to the number in the family. Little money 
was needed ; and, there being little money and little knowledge of 
the outer world, there was small temptation to extravagance. 
Everything centred in the home. A hundred associations, now 
things of the past, solidified family life. A farmer setting out for 
church in his broadcloth coat might notice the very sheep whose 
greeting would remind him that he was wearing the wool at 
second hand. He w^ould pass the fields where his straw hat and 
dinner basket had grown, and where the linen of his wife's go-to- 
meeting gown had blossomed. The leather of his boots had been 
grown and perhaps tanned on the farm. The striking of fire 
from a flint and drawing of water with a sweep were picturesque 
rites, a communion with the localized spirits of fire and water, 
which were cheapened as matches were carried in the pocket 
and pump handles bobbed in the kitchen. 

The modern system of division of labor has brought the New 
England farmer many comforts and advantages, and mocks him 
with a vision of many more. Supplies and appliances better than 
were made at home are laid at his door, and many are wonder- 
fully cheap. The Standard Oil Company has taken charge of 
candle-dipping. Factories at Lowell and Fall River maintain a 
continuous spinning-bee. The trouble is that they all want 
money. Before he thinks of buying comforts or luxuries, there 
are certain fixed charges to be met, — for taxes, labor, commer- 



cial fertilizers, and groceries, with demand for tools, machinery, 
harnesses, wagons, and a hundred other things. In the scheme of 
specialization where comes in the specialty which is to bring the 
New England farmers their share of the medium of exchange ? 
Those who have not emigrated have answered the question to 
some extent by leaving the rougher lands for market gardens, 
poultry, fruit, and dairy farms ; but the result of changed condi- 
tions has been the disappearance of the agricultural New Eng- 
land of fifty years ago. 

In the manufacturing towns .which have become the centre 
of characteristic life, changes have been chiefly in the way of 
growth and expansion. Before 1850 factory work had been done 
by young people from the farms. In summer the factory bell 
aroused the town at half-past four in the morning for a day's 
labor of thirteen hours. Wages were low, but board could be 
had at $1.00 to $1.50 by the week. Native labor was soon dis- 
placed by foreign, the early immigration being Irish ; and the 
Irish have been succeeded by the incursion of French Canadians, 
beginning twenty years later. At present these latest arrivals, in 
a solid body of half a million, compact in language and intact in 
religion, are testing the digestive powers of New England. 

Manufacturing industry, along with its growth, has passed 
through a process of evolution. Many small local factories found 
themselves unable to compete with the resources of the larger 
centres, and have dropped out. The location of factory towns was 
fixed at first by water power, but of late the mills have become 
largely independent of water. The advantage of cheap transpor- 
tation and the effect of competition have been shown in the con- 
centration of cotton mills around Narragansett Bay and Buzzards 
Bay. 

The church and school of Puritan New England have been 
differently affected by these fundamental changes. The division 
into sects had occurred in the first half of the century, the Bap- 
tists, Universalists, Methodists, Unitarians, etc., separating from 
the Congregational order and the Episcopalians and Presbyterians 
coming in. The breaking up was natural in a time of mental and 
spiritual ferment, though the causes affecting individuals were 
doubtless varied. In the case of Zephaniah Cross the going over 
to the Baptist communion was due to the Eastman auction. A 
bellows-top buggy was sacrificed at such figures that Mr. Cross 



8 

was constrained to bid it in. The lofty " bellus-top " would not 
turn back, and on arriving at his stall in the orthodox church sheds 
he found himself unable to drive under the roof. The horse 
sheds of the Baptist society were built upon more liberal lines, 
and after a season of earnest deliberation he became a convert to 
the doctrine of immersion. 

In cities and thriving towns the problems of the churches are 
little different from those which are found under like conditions 
elsewhere. In the villages and hill country the division into 
sects has proved a serious disadvantage. Even country churches 
are more comfortable than fifty years ago. It was not much 
before 1850 that stoves were introduced. There are many tradi- 
tions of the opposition with which this symbol of worldly luxury 
was received. In one church it had been finally decided to use 
stoves for the first time upon a certain Sunday. A strong oppo- 
nent of the innovation had been but a short time in his pew before 
he found the heat insufferable. He first removed his overcoat and 
then his coat, only to learn that, owing to delays, no fire had as yet 
been started in the stoves. Stoves were generally placed in the 
rear of the church, on either side ; and products of combustion 
were supposed to be carried through a long rambling stovepipe, 
suspended by wires under the galleries, to chimneys at either side 
of the pulpit. The intrusion of any secular concern upon the 
peace of the Sabbath jarred upon the senses. Pat Rogers from 
time immemorial had conducted a laundry at Hanover in the in- 
terest of Dartmouth students. He was a familiar figure trundling 
the " wash " to his laboratory or wheeling back the laundered 
residuum. On a quiet Sunday morning a conscientious student 
was shocked to see Mr. Rogers delivering a portion of his finished 
product. Patrick explained that it was a case of peculiar exigency. 
" What will become of you if you thus desecrate the Sabbath ? " 
" I dunno, sor. I s'pose likely I'll fetch up at the baad place." 
" Ah, but think of what that means ! What will you do there .-" " 
"Oh, begobs, I s'pose I'll gwan aboot the same as here, — wash 
for stoodents." 

Education has no story of decay except in decreased at- 
tendance at rural schools and disappearance of many of the 
unendowed academies. The strength of the old district school 
was in the close relationship of teacher and pupils. The school 
like the home was full of local associations and individual char- 



acter. The school-boy of fifty years ago remembers the noon- 
mark on the window-sill, the crack in the floor where classes toed 
the mark, the raspberry bush inciting^ to tardiness, and the 
birch provided in the compensation of nature as a corrective. 

The learning of a few books " by heart " fostered exactness of 
knowledge, with freedom and accuracy in giving it expression. 
If written examinations had prevailed in those days, the scholars 
would have compared favorably with those of the present day in 
preciseness of definition and in ability to tell what they knew. 

Children went barefoot in summer. In winter the boys wore 
home-made caps with flapping ear-laps, home-knit comforters, 
and copper-toed cowhide boots, periodically greased to exclude 
the elements. It is a strange but true story of the force of early 
habit that an honored and well-known scholar, sitting at a formal 
dinner and becoming abstracted during the brilliant monologue of 
another distinguished guest, was seen anointing his boots with 
the oil of the salad cruet. 

After spinning-wheels and looms were carried to the attic, few 
families could afford to buy store clothes. They made up the 
cloth at home, allowing liberal margins to growing boys, some of 
whom never attained the full standard of their sleeves and 
trousers. Children in the old times were so numerous that like 
silver in the days of Solomon they were nothing accounted of. It 
is certainly a change to the present age when the child is father 
of the man, and of the grandparent and of the whole community. 
One sympathizes with the man mentioned by Mr. Emerson who 
felt it a misfortune to have been born when children were nothing 
and to have lived until men were nothing. 

As late as 1850 all the colleges of New England were "seats of 
learning " of the old-fashioned sort. At the opening of the 
academic year the country colleges welcomed the candidate for 
matriculation mounted on a farm wagon, drawn by the horse 
which could be most easily spared from farm work, and bearing 
the blessing of his mother and the seed-cakes of his grandmother. 
Chapel exercises were held before daylight in midwinter, in 
chapels lighted by candles and heated by the Aurora Borealis. A 
chronic form of suicide, known as "boarding one's self," was not 
uncommon. The lack of amusements and of rational forms of 
exercise led to such laborious forms of pleasantry as gathering the 
blinds and gates of the village upon the campus or the elevation 
of a horse or cow to the college belfry. 



lO 

Higher education has not merely become higher, but broader, — 
too broad, as old-fashioned people think, to be deep. Wealth has 
increased at the old centres of learning. Wisdom could not fail 
to accumulate when, as has been remarked, so much is brought in 
by successive classes of Freshmen and so little is carried away by 
Seniors. / 

The lyceum was another power in education which brought 
the Mahomets of New England to the mountains of New Hamp- 
shire, Vermont, and the Berkshires. Newspapers now bring a 
larger world to the same hill country, but without the personal 
magnetism and touch of enthusiasm inspired when Emerson, 
Holmes, and Phillips lectured in the meeting-house and college 
students boarded 'round in the school district. There was also 
an agreeable reaction on the minds and pockets of the lecturers. 
Dr. Chapin used to say that he valued the fame derived from 
lecturing, F-A-M-E standing for Fifty And My Expenses. Mr. 
James T. Fields having given one of his charming lectures in the 
missionary spirit in a small place, where no amount had been 
agreed upon, his charges were discussed with the Lecture Com- 
mittee. "We had calkerlated," said the Si,pokesman, "to make 
it five dollars ; but it wa'n't exackly what we expected, and we 
have conclo/Dded that tew fifty would be abaout right ! " 

The railroads and newspapers have also robbed the tavern of 
its importance as a social club. In the stage-coach days the 
tavern-keeper was a person of importance and dignity. He 
gathered news from travellers and hobnobbed with public men. 
Neighbors dropped in with gossip, which he was expected to 
broadcast. He was a combined bulletin board, club steward. 
Exchange, Board of Trade, and Associated Press. It is a tribute 
to the old New England tavern that a large proportion of the men 
who have made the reputation and managed the business of the 
great hotels of New York as well as in more distant cities served 
their apprenticeship in New England, and largely on main lines of 
stage traffic which ran from Boston up through New Hampshire. 
With the decrease of road travel taverns sank into a desuetude not 
wholly innocuous. In "wet" or semi-wet towns they became a 
" hang-out " for local sons of Belial. At arid cross-roads it 
became difficult to obtain nourishment except at stated times. An 
indulgent landlady might fry the wayfarer a few buckwheat cakes 
and a cup of tea, but eggs and meat were hard to find. The 



II 

bicycle has not done all that was expected as a reviving force ; , 
but the general reaction of city on country is slowly awakening 
the country hotel. 

As educational forces and means of grace, we should not omit 
the maiden aunt, who in the big New England families was as 
much an institution as the New England conscience, which, in- 
deed, she personified and guided in practical channels. As 
depicted in a sketch of the "New Hampshire Way of Life," by 
Mr. F. B. Sanborn, the work in the house " was done by the wife, 
daughters, and maiden aunts, who were apt to inherit a residence 
in the old house upon their father's death, and who were indis- 
pensable to the simple life of the rural community. Theodore 
Parker used to quote an aunt who said, ' Mr. Parker, the position 
of a maiden aunt is very important : without maiden aunts the 
world could not be peopled, sir ! ' There was more in this odd 
remark than met the ear. In the nursing and pupilage of New 
Hampshire children the aunt bore a great part. Besides nursing 
the sick, they were usually tenders of other women's babies and 
instructors of children as they grew older. Emerson's Aunt 
Mary bore the largest part in his education and that of his 
brilliant brothers. Being asked once what he should have done 
without her, he said : ' Ah ! that would have been a loss ! I could 
have better spared Greece and Rome ! ' " 

To appreciate what the loss of Greece and Rome would have 
meant to our fathers and grandfathers, it is only necessary to 
take up the " occasional literature " of fifty years ago, entitled, 
perhaps, " An Historical Address upon the Opening of the Toll- 
bridge across the Onion River " or " Remarks upon Thanksgiv- 
ing Day, suggested by the Protracted Drought." The subject 
matter would be found to consist largely of reflections suggested 
by ancient history and of moral deductions therefrom. The 
ordinary tone of writing was stilted and full of mild moralizing. 
For a chance example, in a magazine article of 1852, describing 
the wearing apparel of early New England, we note, after a de- 
scription of the shoes of our forefathers, " While appendages for 
the feet are properly provided, true ornaments of the mind and 
heart should not be neglected." 

In spite of ministers and schoolmasters and maiden aunts, 
and perhaps in protest against the strictness of their training, 
there has always been a streak of " queerness " running up 



12 

through the New England granite. The fathers were shrewd and 
practical ; but, as Miss Gorren in a recent essay on the Anglo- 
Saxons well remarks : " Their close attention to the realities 
of life seems to unfit the mind for correct judgment in abstract 
things. Nowhere are so many persons of sound intelligence in 
all practical affairs so easily led to follow after crazy seers and 
seeresses. An active mind refuses to be shut out from the world 
of the highest abstractions ; and, if not guided thither by regular 
training and habit, it will set off even at the tail of the first 
ragged street procession that passes." 

It must be allowed that there has always been in the New 
England character a certain streak of superstition. The Yankee 
housewife was careful in observing signs, even to such trifling 
matters as the dropping of a dish-cloth or the overturning of salt. 
Farmers are still found who are guided in the planting of crops 
and the slaying of swine by phases of the moon. Since the day 
of witchcraft the force of superstition has been weakened ; but as 
late as March of the present year the newspapers were reporting 
an enormous business transacted in the city of Boston in the 
advertisement and sale of so-called luck boxes, — small boxes con- 
taining a brass ring, supposed to emanate from India, but really 
manufactured at Lynn. They were sold at ninety-nine cents 
apiece, and were guaranteed to confer the favors of fortune. 
When the business of this good man was interrupted, there were 
said to have been more than twenty thousand letters in the post- 
office inscribed with his address. 

Perhaps the characteristic New England humor derived its 
flavor from the same causes. Repressed intensity sought expres- 
sion in a shrewd exaggeration which was made picturesque by 
habits of close observation. So of the oft-mentioned Connecticut 
man, who returned from a tour of Europe unwilling to admit that 
he had seen anything more remarkable than at home. " You say 
you went across Switzerland into Italy. You must have been 
impressed by those mighty mountains." '* Wall, now you speak 
on't, I dew remember I might ha' passed over some risin' 
graound." A tourist inquires of a native sitting on the tavern 
porch at Colebrook, with face red from exposure to the elements 
(and also, it being Independence Day, to alcoholic stimulants), in 
regard to running certain rapids in the upper Connecticut in a 
canoe. 



13 

" Go over 'em in a canoe, why .... you couldn't go over 
them falls in a balloon." For a single illustration of the quaint, 
earthy, Yankeeish sayings, I refer again to " The New Hampshire 
Way of Life." An old carpenter named Herrick, full — as became 
his occupation — of wise saws, was at work shingling the Close 
barn. Deacon Close was an extremely small man, with an ex- 
pression of worried importance, caused by a long search for the 
elusive penny among the rocks of the hill farm. His mental as 
well as physical powers had succumbed to the lapse of years. 
" Jeems" came up from the hay-field, and called out to Herrick, 
who was shingling the roof, " Mr. Herrick, have you seen anything 
of father lately ? " "Oh, yes," was .the cheerful answer, " I see 
the old cat cair him under the barn abaout half an hour ago." 
This, too, appeals to the mind by the vivid picture which it sug- 
gests. The humor in this exaggeration was sometimes uncon- 
scious. The antipathy of New England housekeepers to dirt is 
well known. Their life was such a wearisome contest with dust 
that they often prematurely resolved themselves into it. One of 
these housekeepers, expecting a visit from friends, by a special 
effort made her house spotless and speckless. She greets her 
visitors at the door with the hearty invitation, " Come right in, if 
you can — for the dirt." 

The literature of New England was an outgrowth of the native 
characteristics of the people, of their homely philosophy and 
shrewd humor. It was the offspring of church and school, and 
was not without the usual characteristics of a minister's son. An 
interesting study of its relation to its stern parent is offered in 
Mr. Sidney George Fisher's " Men, Women, and Manners in 
Colonial Times." The expansion of literary life began late irl 
the eighteenth century with the decline of the Puritan domination, 
with the relaxation of severity and the freeing of the individual 
judgment. Most of the great actors in the literary drama were 
descendants for many generations of New England ministers, 
whose minds were trained to shrewd investigation and close 
analysis. These literary men were all born between 17S0 and 
1827, the time of change from total repression to absolute free- 
dom. They lived amid inspiring events, not unlike those of the 
Elizabethan era ; a vast expansion in discovery and settlement 
toward the West ; with the wars and rumors of wars of a heroic 
age. They were stimulated by the rising spirit of invention and 



H 

discovery. They produced a literature which was complete in 
poetry, romance, philosophy, history, and theology, as well as 
criticism. As was the case with the Jews and Greeks, and in 
England and France, it had its basis in the united feeling of a 
people having a distinct national character ; and, in the opinion 
of this writer, its failure to continue was due to the material 
transformation of New England, which has broken up its con- 
tinuity. 

Coming now to the moral, which must be drawn in the old- 
fashioned way from these comparisons, we find it colored by 
individual bias. The elderly pessimist sighs for the ' simple, 
hearty enjoyments of the good old times ; the neighborly running 
in to borrow a rising of yeast or a setting of eggs ; the Sociable 
which came as a January thaw in the neighborhood winter; the 
blazing hearth, with pie closet and rum closet inviting consultation 
on either hand. He is heard to speak of the aping of empty 
gentility, of formal calls and stupid receptions, of vulgar display 
and snobbish extravagance. The student of sociology, developed 
under the new system, points out the barrenness and narrowness 
of the life of the fathers, its poverty and lack of color. He calls 
attention to the prim and clammy aristocracy which grew up 
wherever circumstances permitted, as in the cities from Boston to 
Portland. With the logic of results in his favor, he plans to force 
restored vitality upon the disheartened hill towns by University 
Extension and systematic lecturing. The old-school philosopher 
complains that the cut and-dried ward caucus is shutting off the 
open discussion of the town meeting. He says that the doctrine 
of foreordination has been transferred from religion to politics. 
Our opinions, like our wearing materials, come to us machine- 
made. He pictures the disgrace which would have overtaken a 
freeman who sold his blood-bought rights as a voter for pieces of 
silver. Now he knows of hundreds — The younger man inter- 
rupts merely to remark that the broader discussions which have 
come in with the modern press and a freer social life have 
rendered needless these endless powwows over the choice of a 
fence-viewer or culler of staves. Except for the occasional and 
uncertain opportunities offered by a fire or a funeral, the town 
meeting was the only occasion when our grandfathers could get 
together and talk things over. 

It has to be admitted that the praise of old-fashioned social 



15 

life will hardly bear examination. The necessities of things had 
made the exaltation of " work " a sort of mechanical religion. 
Faces, even of the young, assumed a set, anxious, but determined 
expression. Their life was described by that long and dreary 
word " utilitarian." The farmer thought of the cloud-capped 
mountain as a convenient but unreliable barometer, and of the 
joyous cascade as a feature of the grist-mill. Economy was a 
fetich, and extravagance a sin. The good times which the young 
people managed to have stand out by contrast against the cold 
uniformity of the sombre background. The characteristic traits 
of the New England of fifty years ago were the natural outcome 
of such a life working upon such material, — versatility, " capable- 
ness," practical skill, shrewd common sense, with lapses into gul- 
libility, close observation and quaint remark, earnestness, philo- 
sophic humor, craving for knowledge, ambition to " be some- 
thing." They were close-mouthed and close-fisted, self-contained, 
and self-assertive. No other race of farmers " have had such 
acute intelligence, reverence for learning, and keen sense of the 
superior importance of spiritual things." For six generations 
they worked in their narrow training school, without realizing that 
they w^ere victims of special hardship. But, when a broader life 
was offered, they lost no time in going out to preach the sermons, 
teach the schools, edit the journals, make the laws, build up the 
business, and take charge of the purses and principles of the 
whole nation. 

Their lives of patient self-denial were not without a craving for 
brightness and beauty. It seldom went farther among the men 
than to express itself in neat dooryards and trim fences and in 
the stately trees which lined the streets of every village. Our 
grandmothers loved the scent of lilacs and syringa and the 
cheeriness of hollyhocks and tiger lilies. In the days when car- 
pets, except rag rugs, were an unheard of luxury, Mrs. Rowe has 
told us that a good sister secured a large square of sail-cloth, and 
with a few crude colors painted upon this canvas rude patterns 
of familiar flowers, chiefly blue roses and green lilies, covering 
the whole with a thick coat of varnish. Everybody came to see, 
and wonder and admire, Deacon Close among them. Turning 
his honest, weather-beaten face earnestly upon the erring sister, 
he exclaimed, " Do you expect to have all this, Sister Meiggs — 
and heaven, too ?" 



i6 

The characteristic craving for knowledge included all things, 
great and small. It never overlooked the most trifling details of 
other people's affairs. Wendell Phillips is sometimes quoted as 
saying that the Puritan hell would be a place where every one 
had to mind his own business. A minister's wife, after a some- 
what disturbed pastorate in a town in Eastern Massachusetts, 
described it as having the quiet of the grave — without its peace. 
Jerry Hatch has been consumed with curiosity for years in trying 
to determine whether the stones which glitter in the brooch worn by 
the Widow Stillings, as she makes her majestic progress into church, 
are the "ginooine " thing. The widow passes away suddenly and 
apoplectically. The brooch is understood, at her special direc- 
tion to have been consigned with her to the casket, and no 
opportunity offered to "view the remains." Jerry's suspicions 
are confirmed ; but he is overheard to remark gloomily, " I shan't 
find aout till the Day o' Judgment, and then there'll be so much 
goin' on that it's more'n likely I sh'll forget all abaout it." 

The old and new are now so closely interwoven that they may 
be compared side by side in any corner of New England, as was 
brought to mind by a recent bicycle trip beyond the beaten path 
in Connecticut. We had been told that good accommodations 
could always be had at Poole's Corners ; and Captain Poole was 
found hospitably disposed, but there was to be a dance in the 
hall over his store. 

"You see," he explained, "we're goin' to hev a kind uv a 
social gatherin' to raise money for a new hearse. There's a room 
I s'pose you could have, but I've kinder promised it to the feller 
that plays the bull-fiddle. He's always a-tunin' of it up, and then 
they'll want to leave their hats and things there and be runnin' 
in and out till pretty late. You'd do better to go on to the Tuttle 
place, — Mrs. Whipple Tuttle's. It may bother ye a shade to 
locate the place," continued the captain, observing the deepening 
shadows. " Tuttle's ruther a common name here, and so I may 
say is Whipple. Turn down there by John Bazro's shoe shop. 
Yes, that's his sign, — Jean Bergeron, — queer way of spellin' 
them Frenchmen have. Then keep a-bearin' to the left till you 
come to a big yeller house with a wind- wheel. You can't miss 
it. That ain't the place, but it's the John Henry Tuttle place ; 
and there you leave John Hen's barn on the left, and go past 
Aunt Jim's, then by a red house, — John Tuttle's (Red House 



17 

John we call him), — and, lemme see, there's one other house to 
the right, — John Hen's John lives there now, — and right next is 
the widder's." At the foot of a long lane we found a man finish- 
ing some work in the dusk, of whom we inquired, " Is that Mrs. 
Tuttle's house up the lane ? " 

" Yes " (with an amiable grin). " Do they accommodate people 
with rooms and — er — something to eat .'' " " Yes." 

"Do you think they can take care of us?" (With gratifying 
smile.) " Yes, yes." 

We toiled up the lane to learn that it was a private retreat for 
the feeble-minded, and that no further applications would be re- 
ceived. '• But your button-headed baboon at the foot of the lane 
said you entertained travellers." 

" Oh, he's a Polock." 

There was so much difficulty in finding Mrs. Tuttle's — with a 
light sprinkling of rain beginning to fall — that we stopped at a 
comfortable-looking house on the way. It proved to be a Mrs. 
John Whipple's place, Mrs. Whipple had " nothing in the house," 
" and I can't give you no separate room. You might sleep with 
the hired man. He's real clean for one of them Rooshan Finns." 
We thanked her, and moved on to Mrs. Tuttle's. It was a large 
house, rambling loosely in two general directions. Mrs. Tuttle 
could not provide for us, but thought that Mrs. Tuttle Whipple, 
"right in the next house," would furnish accommodations. We 
proceeded to the next doorway, and knocked several times. A 
faint light appeared at the end of the hall, which blew out before 
the lady carrying it reached the door. 

" Is this Mrs. Tuttle Whipple ? " we inquired. 

"No, sir," — in a slightly injured tone, — "this is Mrs. Whipple 
Tuttle to whom you were just speaking at the other end of the 
house. This is a kind of double house. I told you the next 
house." 

We apologized, and groped our way to the next building, which 
was gloomy and unlighted. After pounding on the door, we heard 
a door open, apparently in another building; and a woman's form 
was seen approaching. 

" Is this Mrs. Tipple Whup — er — pardon — Mrs. Tuttle 
Whipple ? " 

" No, young man, it is not. It is Mrs. Whipple Tuttle. I told 
you to go to the next house. This ain't no house. It's the Catho- 
lic church," • 



i8 

We went to the next edifice, and knocked again. An elderly 
lady appeared in the distance with a dim candle. It must be Mrs. 
Whipple Tuttle again. 

" Er — is this Mrs. Whittle Tupple, — I mean Mrs. Tuttle 
Whipple ? " 

"Yes," said the lady, "but I don't want any" — 

" Not at all, madam. We only want something to cat. Will pay 
for whatever " — 

" Oh, well, it's after our supper time ; but we got up a supper 
for six Eyetalian laborers that are workin' on the mill-dam. Bein' 
the night before a holiday, they must 'a' gone down to the village 
and got drunk. So if you " — 

We ate the supper of the six sons of Italy, and slept the sleep 
of the righteous anaconda. 

As to the comparative advantages of the old way of life, if any- 
body wants to try for himself, as a native philosopher observed, 
" there ain't no law agin it." Only a few days ago a man went 
into a store in Fairfield, Me., and remarked that everything 
except the boots that he had on — namely, stockings, shirts, under- 
clothes, outside clothes, and cap — were spun, woven, and made by 
his mother. The fact that we seldom hear of such cases confirms 
the general belief that the new order of things, from a material 
point of view, is an improvement. 

The Puritan New England was like a mighty tree, which, after 
a slow, patient growth of two hundred years and sending its seeds 
to float upon the Western air, bowed before the storms of change. 

But strong shoots are springing up in the old soil. There 
seems to be a feeling in many quarters that New England is in a 
bad way. Look through an index of periodical literature for the 
past ten years, and you find information grouped under such 
heads as the following : — 

NEW ENGLAND: 
Decline of ; 
Decay of Rural ; 
Decadence of Thought of; 
Problems of Churches of; 
Crisis in Industries of. 
If there has been any general decline in material prosperity, it 
is not a matter of record. The census of 1895 showed a gain in 
population in Massachusetts of 15 per cent., about the same as in 



19 

Wisconsin, in the growing region of the West. The percentage 
of increase throughout New England for the past ten years will 
be found to be the largest for any decade since 1850. Bank 
clearings, railroad earnings, savings deposits, school appropriations, 
and other barometers fail to show any area of depression. In 
New England it is particularly true that social changes depend 
on economic conditions. During the general sluggishness of 
business the present advantages of cotton manufacturers in the 
South were brought into marked prominence. As was the case 
in New England fifty years ago, they are favored with an abun- 
dance of native labor at low wages, and are free from restrictions 
as to age of operatives and hours of labor. The wage-demanding 
element is not yet organized. Southern manufacturing will in- 
crease to the benefit of the South and advantage of the whole 
country. Jobbers of boots and shoes in the West will become 
manufacturers. In these and other lines, local manufacturers will 
supply their own tributary country with many grades of goods. 
How far they will cut into New England business is not yet clear. 
Relations between labor and capital will in time be figured as 
closely as in the East. With materials like wool and cotton, which 
are compact in bulk and converted into fabrics with little waste, 
the question of advantage in freight rates depends upon nearness 
to the consumer. Iowa creameries can deliver butter in the New 
York market to better advantage than a farmer twenty miles aw-ay 
in Westchester County, because the bulky Western grown feed- 
stuffs, the raw materials, freights on which are prohibitory to 
the Eastern farmer, are converted at home into a concentrated 
product. But there is no such difference between wool and 
woollens or between cotton and cotton fabrics, or even between 
leather and boots and shoes. 

In New England, manufacturers have a large market at home 
which geographically belongs to them. The recent meetings of 
manufacturers in Boston were largely occupied with discussions of 
the growth of exports. We grow the cotton of the world and let 
others profit by its manufacture, standing fifth in the list of export- 
ing nations and below the inland republic of Switzerland. Last 
year the United States produced 11,078,000 bales of cotton, out 
of a total world's product of 12,949,000 bales. New England 
manufactured about one-fourth as much as Old England. Yet the 
exports of Great Britain were to those of America nearly in 



20 

the mystic ratio of i6 to i. Our sales of cotton goods in Latin 
America in the decade ending 1898 were less than 6 per cent. 
of their total purchases. With cottons and other classes of goods 
the problems of overproduction and home competition may per- 
haps be met by studying the tastes of foreign consumers, extend- 
ing facilities for American banking and trading, and promoting 
reciprocal trade. It is possible that the time may come when all 
the cotton grown in the South, on both sides of the Mississippi, 
will be manufactured in the South. If the future deprives New 
England of the material to continue what is now her greatest 
industry, it is not too much to assume that Yankee ingenuity will 
by that time have found something to take its place. 

The woollen industry has the advantage of the pre-eminence of 
Boston as the American market for raw wool. The wool market, 
in return, is assured of its position by the proximity of factories 
and by its hold on the business community. Boston bank presi- 
dents understand the grading and market value of wools, and favor 
the storage certificates of the wool warehouse as security for 
advances. 

In all her industries the lack of home supplies of coal works 
against New England. However, she is in partnership with the 
force of gravitation, and has in her water power a resource to fall 
back upon, in these days of coal and steam, and one which may 
render her independent of coal, as the development of electric 
power from water is perfected. Abundant water power, close to 
ocean transportation, forms a good basis for permanence in manu- 
facturing industry. Manufacturing seems likely, in the future, to 
make restitution to the fields and forests which it has drained in 
the past. The deserted hills are perfectly adapted to raising 
sheep, and sheep would be the ideal means of restoring the sight- 
liness and fertility of the old pastures. The time will come, with 
growth in grace, when the American people will eat less pork and 
more mutton. The forefathers should have been guided by the 
Old Testament on this point. The great Hebrew law-giver never 
showed more plainly his oneness with the divine will than when he 
branded pork as an abomination before the Lord. A people can- 
not go on consuming fresh pork without becoming shiftless in 
habits and sodden with drugs. The time must come when this 
obscene beast shall be dislodged from its incumbency on the 
American stomach. The hills of New England should be a 



21 

source of supply to the woollen mills of the Merrimac and Black- 
stone, as are the highlands of Scotland to the mills of the Cheviot 
and Tweed. Even at present prices, sheep will more than pay the 
cost of keeping. The old-time flocks of sheep would come back 
but for the capital required to restore fences, barns, and pens. As 
people lapse into poverty, they find that they can afford to keep 
more yellow dogs. And this is another fact which deters the 
average farmer from becoming a shepherd. The counteracting 
influence of a dozen good sheep dogs might do as much for the 
restoration of a decadent hill town as a university settlement. 

As is the sheep to the woollen trade, so is his cousin, the goat, 
to the manufacture of boots and shoes. Of recent years our 
manufactures have grown to such an extent as to tax the entire 
world to supply our demand for goat, calf, and sheep skins. 
During the past eight months we imported sixty million goat skins, 
and the imports of other skins have increased in the same propor- 
tion. The tough and self-asserting goat is less liable than his 
gentler cousin to the inroads of dogs and other disorders, and 
there are projects on foot for peopling the pastures of the aban- 
doned farms with the goat and gamboling kid. 

Again, this is the age of wood pulp. Holyoke and other river 
towns have built up a paper industry which, if fostered by wise 
forestry laws, will supply New England with a permanent source 
of wealth within her own borders. Spruce logs float down the 
Connecticut and the rivers of Maine, and are transformed, not 
only into paper, but into the multitude of articles now made from 
wood pulp. The granite quarries and fisheries will always remain 
substantial sources of wealth ; while, of course, the coupons to be 
clipped from the summer boarder test the utmost powers of the 
imagination. New Hampshire expects before many years to 
derive from this source a cash annual income of $15,000,000 or 
$20,000,000. 

Although in a period of transition, there is good reason to 
believe that the industrial development of New England has not 
come to a halt. As it expands, it seems to be certain that the 
greater part of Southern and Eastern New England will become 
suburban. The electric cars are doing away with the crowded 
tenement house. Bicycles at low prices help to make the me- 
chanic independent of space. This region will be filled with com- 
fortable homes, with space for lawns and trees, while the interven- 



22 

ing land will be devoted to market gardening and intensive farm- 



ing. 



Such a community is graded and assorted in tastes, occupations, 
and intelligence, — very different from the simple uniform society 
of fifty years ago, but permitting a freer and broader life. It 
should appeal to the student of social science as a promising field 
for the new American home, where one can get more out of life 
than in the glare and clang of cities or the far-away quiet of the 
farm. The democratic spirit, which has showed amazing leaven- 
ing power, may have enough persistence to soften class distinc- 
tions and preserve respect for labor. 

The hill towns also seem to have passed the turning-point in 
the depression which resulted from their elevation. Their vitality 
depends on underlying conditions, which are more in their favor 
than at any time in fifty years. If Horace Greeley were alive, he 
might say, " Young man, stay right where you are." The Inter- 
state Commerce Law has been of some help to Eastern farmers. 
The virgin soils of the West are exhausted, and artificial fertilizing 
has become a factor in the cost of production even beyond the 
Mississippi. Western lands are no longer free, but the supply of 
cyclones and locusts was never more bounteous. The city has 
come nearer the country, and is constantly increasing its social 
and material opportunities. Hard-working, saving foreigners are 
taking a turn at the deserted farms. 

The old American stock have stayed at home on thousands of 
farms. They control the Boards of Agriculture, agricultural so- 
cieties and colleges, and are slowly overcoming the difficulties 
which beset the New England farmer. They have made some 
progress in co-operation, which is nowhere more important than to 
farmers, but from the nature of things nowhere more difficult to 
attain. They are seeking to apply the methods which prevail in 
other industries, such as tjie saving of by-products, exact and 
thorough cultivation, wholesale buying and direct selling, atten- 
tion to labor-saving crops, like hay and fruit, and studying the 
tastes and habits of the consumer. 

The friendly interest of the cities is a matter of policy for the 
future as well as obligation for the past. In the age of collectiv- 
ism, votes are still distributed among individuals ; and New Eng- 
land farmers in a crisis vote and act for order and stability. Our 
great statesmen, merchants, and soldiers come from the farm. 



23 

While the present standard of our great men is phenomenally 
high, we must not allow the source of supply to deteriorate. 
Farmers lead a life which every son of Adam ought to lead. 
Many of our millionaires would go back and run a farm if they 
could afford it. 

The rural villages have also their social problems and sharp 
contrasts. There are many indications of the growing up of a 
landed aristocracy. Wealthy people spend more time each year 
in their country houses. The situation is full of problems, but 
problems are the New Englander's vital breath. Looking at the 
difficulties of the past, any future seems easy. Other portions of 
the country boast of their " resources," — rich mines, fertile soils, 
soft skies, inexhaustible forests. As Preston, of South Carolina, 
said, New England has nothing to offer but granite and ice, — 
" nothing but rocks and ice " ; and of late the factories are rob- 
bing her of even her homespun ice. 

The modesty of New England in treating of the civilization 
which she built up and of her influence on other regions is pro- 
verbial. She might dwell with equal modesty and volubility upon 
what she has done at home in meeting the changes of the nine- 
teenth century. For a single item, think of the social and 
sanitary problems involved in the sudden crowding of the cities 
and swarming in of a tenement population. Yet the death-rate 
in Massachusetts in 1890-95 was but little different from 
that in 1856-60, Scarlet fever and typhoid fever, which 
stood high in the list of causes of death in 1856, have disap- 
peared from among the first ten causes. The improvement has 
kept pace with increase in public water supplies and growth of 
sanitary science. 

The European peasant comes in with listless, sullen face, and 
clumsy walk. His dirty-faced children go to school under the flag. 
In ten years there is little to distinguish them from other 
Yankees. Their sons will deliver addresses in Faneuil Hall, and 
become members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery. 

It is a time of transition for New England at the end of the 
century as it was in 1850, One prophecy seems safe, — that 
nothing in the future will test her powers of adaptation and 
assimilation more severely than the changes of the past fifty 
years. 



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